Megan & Rachelle – Philadelphia, PA
Megan Schneider, 33, professor, physician assistant
Rachelle Schneider, 35, photographer, author, arts educator
The first time she saw Megan, 5’1” Rachelle thought she was a giant. Megan stands 5’9”, and “looked like Liz Phair at the time.” They met through mutual friends on MySpace—it was 2006, after all. The decade since then has been filled with ups and downs, but always adventure. A few years ago, Rachelle and Megan quit their jobs, rented out their house, and traveled to Central and South America for a year. “The day we landed on U.S. soil,” they say, “was the day the Windsor case was announced.” (That was the 2013 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down integral parts of the Defense of Marriage Act.) Two months later, they married. The “dark times,” Rachelle recalls, were in 2007, when she broke her collar bone playing roller derby. She had to go through five surgeries in three years, and was unable to use her left arm most of the time. But Megan’s medical knowledge and strength, she says, helped them get through it and become even closer. Now, as they try to grow their family, they are calling on their mutual strength again. “As we continue to struggle, we have witnessed, seemingly, everyone around us getting pregnant,”?Rachelle says. “It has been the hardest struggle of our lives, but we are in it together.”
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